Conference organizers have uninvited U.S. government employees due to tensions tied to revelations about electronic surveillance activities by the NSA. In a blog post, Defcon founder Jeff Moss, who also goes by the alias Dark Tangent, stated that traditionally the conference has been an "open nexus of hacker culture, a place where seasoned pros, hackers, academics and feds can meet" and share ideas on neutral territory. However, recent events have endangered that.

"When it comes to sharing and socializing with feds, recent revelations have made many in the community uncomfortable about this relationship," he wrote. "Therefore, I think it would be best for everyone involved if the feds call a "time-out" and not attend DEF CON this year. This will give everybody time to think about how we got here, and what comes next."

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You don't need to be a genius to debug a pf.conf firewall ruleset, you just need the guts to run tcpdump